I'm a writer. But there are zillions of writers. Here's some of my stuff.

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Miriam Hopkins

It’s so strange how movie stars seem free of time, and people who were born generations before us are young and vital and alive forever, and we can develop terrific and utterly ludicrous crushes on them. For me it’s Ava Gardner and Marlene Dietrich , and Miriam Hopkins. I have adored Miriam Hopkins ever since I saw her in the 1930’s Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde. That’s the best version of the story, Frederic March is brilliant and terrifying and Miriam Hopkins is sensational as the dance hall girl, in bed and nude and gloriously Pre-Code. You could get away with that in 1931. She seemed designed for those times, she was gorgeous and sexy, hot tempered and stubborn, she was willful and intellectual and independent. She loathed the Hollywood scene and instead hung out in high level literary circles with the likes of Tennessee Williams, Theodore Dreiser, William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker, and William Saroyan among many, bedding several.. Nuts about writers, she was. And they her. Who could resist her brains and beauty and languid South Carolina drawl? Who could resist a movie star who didn’t like movie star? A southerner who broke all the rules of the old South, down to bedding who she liked and actively loathing segregation? Her’s was a long career doing apparently what she wanted to do and not worrying much about the competition. Perhaps she didn’t give a damn what people thought, period. She certainly swung that naked leg with willful abandon in Dr. Jeckyl and Mr Hyde. Funny how a shapely gam back then could be a feminist statement. Nobody could tell Miriam Hopkins how to behave.
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My latest writing at: Brick's Picks

If Kubrick had died a year or two earlier he never would have made Eyes Wide Shut and his legacy would have been untarnished by such a mediocre flick. Not to mention the dirty old man as director ickiness about the whole thing. And the dialogue, sheesh. Only Pollack sounds like he not acting, and […]

Listening to Steaming Coils lost masterpiece Breaded–the record, I don’t think it ever came out on CD–and digging Brad Laner’s drums. Way loose, loopy, groovy, just the right pops and splashes, splattery press rolls and punchy bass drum kicked loud under crashing cymbals. It’s all so gloriously unmechanical and organic, and the only other drummer […]

My latest writing at: Brick's Politics

As the NRA has been so successful at getting NRA true believers elected in red states and red districts, arming teachers has been the position of probably most Republicans in Congress for years, certainly in the House anyway. And Lapierre’s crazed speech today at CPAC was aimed at the NRA membership, to get them fired […]

I gotta admit that being epileptic I would never have a gun in the house, just as a matter of course. Legally, though, I could buy a gun just like any non-epileptic. It’s not like getting a driver’s license. I was allowed to keep my license but had to go through a year long probationary […]

My latest writing at: Brick's History

(Written in 2016 and never posted.) Never heard of this before, a simulated violent Nazi takeover of Winnipeg, Canada on a wintry February day in 1942. If Day, they called it, and no one had to explain what the if meant. The Axis powers were winning the war in February of 1942–indeed, they had yet […]

There are, as far as I can tell, two ways of saying Los Angeles in L.A. anymore. The English pronunciation, with a soft G (that is, a J) and ending like an ess (and the stress on the first syllable of Angeles). Los ANjeless. And the Spanish pronunciation, with the aspirated G (sort of like […]

My latest writing at: Brick's Science

It seems that 70,000 years ago the global population of homo sapiens was reduced to less than 26,000. Apparently they teased out that bit of info through some genetic analysis. As humans were by then in Africa and across much of Eurasia, that means we were very sparse on the ground. All seven billion of […]

My latest writing at: Brick's Brain

Had the brilliant idea of taking the nighttime dose of my seizure drugs earlier and it’s totally messed up my sleep cycle. Apparently when you hit sixty your body rejects any change just out of spite. Get off my lawn, it’s yelling at me. Probably a Trump supporter, too. Anyway, going to bed again. I […]

A pair of very dear friends, unbeknownst to each other, both pressed on me the idea that these little Facebook and Twitter utterances of mine ought to be preserved. So, after lots of hesitation, I scoured my social media postings for things that qualify as pieces and transferred them to my blog and posterity. Dozens […]